Tim's great-grandmother Eleanor Marie SPENCE was born about May 1889 and died about November 1963 in Florida. She married William Henry Taylor THORNHILL, and they had one child, a son who is still living.
Eleanor's family is one of our most frustrating roadblocks. Here's why.
The 1900 census tells us that her parents were George and Nettie, born Nov 1855 in New York State and Mar 1867 in Ohio, respectively. It's not much to go on, as we have no idea where in New York or Ohio. They were married around 1888, but again, we don't know where. We don't know Nettie's maiden name, and we have no idea when George and Nettie died (though it was probably somewhere in New Jersey, as they were running a hotel in Atlantic City in 1900, and they had it until it burned down in the Teens or Twenties). George's parents, the census says, were born in NY and CT, and Nettie's both in Ohio.
Family theories about Nettie's maiden name include ALMEIDA and "Steinwalder" (we believe that the latter is unlikely, as it seems like a garbled form of a surname found in a different branch of this family). However, we haven't been able to find a likely ALMEIDA anywhere in Ohio census indexes.
George and Nettie had at least one other child, a son named Baldwin ("Baldy"), who may have had two sons nicknamed Don and Vern.
Has anybody seen this family? If so, drop us a line!